Tag: novel

She wrote ‘The Gift’ and Louise Jensen sure has a gift 💫

Kate Frances April 21, 2018

So yesterday I was fortunate enough to meet an author of three thrillers, all of which I have adored and one of which I mentioned briefly in a post on 4 Feb!

It was called ‘The Gift’ (by Louise Jensen) and yesterday Louise signed my copy! Star struck I was and am still smiling from my chat with her.

Totally approachable and encouraging, friendly and warm. What an inspiration when she left and said “I look forward to reading your book!” 😳💕

I haven’t had corn on the cob, as we call it here in the UK, for months so ate two today. Is that bad?!

Talking with an author makes your own goal seem a little more real, achievable perhaps. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s the fact they are real people too, with lives they have to juggle. If they can do it, then why can’t I at least have a go … there’s no guarantee an agent or publisher will want to work with my manuscript but feeling positive about the first draft’s growing existence is amazing. This fact hit my like a mallet today… which I assure you is a good thing 🤣.

I’ve signed up for an online course over six weeks too, starting early May, so that hopefully will also fill me with inspiration. I’m excited about it.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/mallet/

So excited – this is thanks to YOU 🥂

Kate Frances April 9, 2018

I’ve been here waffling away to you for a tad over five months and don’t appear to have bored you to death just yet 🙄💃🏼

I’m so happy to be here and to share the journey of my debut novel’s growth with you.

We are in kindergarten stages right now but have so many places to visit en route to university… can’t wait to share Milan’s streets with you in more detail and the tumbledown house at the failing vineyard, not forgetting Lucy’s love interest and Maud’s mysterious past!

Here’s Gail, one week on …

Kate Frances April 9, 2018

Michael, you’ll be so proud … so far so good! Zoom in to the photo; Gail has company. Lets remind ourselves what she looked like a week ago today when I bought her.

When daughter arrived home last Friday night, her squeals of delight at Gail’s dimensions were soon followed by her thundering up the stairs and moments later returning with a tiny buddha; one she had been given by a returning travelling cousin from Cambodia some eight years before.

I wasn’t sure what to be more impressed by – her memory of its existence and suggestion it sit under the tree beautifully completing the zen vibe, or her being able to find such a small item in her room after such a long time, as I can rarely find my purse from the day before.

So I finally finished Gail Tsukiyama‘s beautiful tale of Stephan-san, Matsu-san and Sachi. The relationships between all three were described so eloquently and with life that I could picture each one at any time, and feel their pains, sorrow or elation and hopes. There is much reference to buddhism and zen gardens, yet I don’t recall reading either of those words in the manuscript once. But I recognised Sachi’s raking of mini pebbles, built for her by Matsu some years earlier, as living proof that the idea of zen gardens providing solace from a troubled mind.

Her own story (as I first saw it – tragic) helps us to see that while beauty in youth brings about its own surface rewards, the psychological journey she was forced to take over the next 30-40 years helped her to understand beauty within. While author Gail gave no exacting details about Sachi and Matsu’s personal relationship behind closed doors, it is my belief (and wish, so don’t burst my bubble) that they have in fact been sharing each other for a very long time, alongside huge mutual respect and friendship.

A nearby shrine is visited throughout the season and Stephen learns a lot from his ward about life along the way, such as during this conversation below following a rare altercation between Matsu and his lifelong, but more shallow, friend Kenzo. The lesson Matsu imparts is the simple message that we should look after our own mental health and allow others around us to find and nurture their own and if a friendship is a healthy two-way valve, it should be able to recover from any disagreement.

Matsu’s quiet understanding of Stephen’s twenty year old life comprehension tells me that he has been more than just a housekeeper for the main family. Matsu has maintained the house and garden of Stephen’s father and grandfather with meticulous care and loving nurture, but he also made it his home. Initially Stephen could not understand Matsu’s solitary choice of lifestyle when he might have, when younger, chosen to follow others into the cities for high paid jobs and life opportunities. By the end of his recuperation year in Tarumi which helped his tuberculosis suffering, Stephen totally grasped the wellbeing which is so in situ within Matsu and was loathe to leave the place himself. Historic events, his own family, society’s expectations and prejudices against his chinese origin mean he had to leave and face his own hurdles … how good would it be to read a sequel? I must google the possibility.

You can tell I enjoyed this book and again I thank Joseph Beech for the suggestion. I wonder how he’s enjoying it, if he’s had the time to progress further through its pages whilst entertaining siblings! Ortensia has also been reading and enjoying this book and its been fun to share the journey.

Don’t laugh, but I ordered a second bonsai. What shall I name this one?

Fantasy Land in NW6

Kate Frances April 6, 2018

COOK is a relatively new chain of food shops which sell homemade frozen ready-meals without additives or E-numbers and branches are sprouting up everywhere in the UK.

This one in North West London is where I purchased a tasty and wholesome lasagne yesterday as my London-based daughter had planned to join me at my Airbnb apartment.

These 24hr visits I make to the capital started about eighteen months ago as an opportunity for daughter to fleece my purse and save one night’s meal budget having started studying in Westminster, and for her to dilute any loneliness worries having left home and the quiet farming countryside where she was born and raised.

My visits – occasionally accompanied by Man of the Woods but mostly alone – initially helped daughter to feel that ‘home’ had travelled to her for a mid-week treat. I was always careful not to make the visits too regular; once a month perhaps in order that she should continue her journey to independence, with a small set of stabilisers (which she no longer needs but still enjoys nonetheless and let’s not forget, she is just 19).

A year on and I still book an Airbnb room/apartment now and then, though they have become more mini writing retreats for myself; short me-time minibreaks, away from my business workshop which is right outside my backdoor. There are many positives about working from home, but one slight negative is that you are never ‘off duty’ compared to people who leave their place of work and come home to relax and unwind.

Man of the Woods accepts these mini breaks now as part of his wife’s outlook on life. While I am the wife of a farmer, I was never cut out to be a traditional farmer’s wife. I admire his amazing mother who cooks three meals a a day for his father, but that’s not just not me. And that’s ok.

So here you find me, people watching, about to have my nails done because nowadays I make time for myself, and I’ve learnt to smile and wave at any opinions from others who see that as selfish. Hard to break the habits of a lifetime, those of guilt for spending time like this.

An Earl Grey with milk, the buzz of London, my present read and I’m in heaven.

Guess who I saw today?? OMG this area is littered with famous actors it seems …

My daughter and I had lunch in the cutest rustic Mediterranean cafe, newly opened, and in walked Paul McGann… He’s done loads!!

and later on, after daughter returned to her office and I moved to another cafe and sat having that cup of earl grey, I was only half concentrating on my novel, I glanced up as a man walked his two children across the road and caught his eye… he smiled. HE smiled AT ME!!! Robert Webb, from ‘Peep Show’ and ‘That Mitchell & Webb Look’ … very funny guy 👌🏼

(He’s a polite man, that’s all 🙄).

Nothing frigid about me – quite the opposite. I’d have had his babies there and then 😂😂🙈🙄

Right. It’s Friday morning.

Phone down missus. Type another chapter …. 👍🏼

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/frigid/”>Frigid</a>

Fancy a mince pie or a finished manuscript?

Kate Frances April 3, 2018

I just fancied one, or four, and I had the ingredients so what the heck? Think outside the box, nudge the rulebook and be daring; I do.

I’m so excited to share with you that I have today revamped the first four chapters, in order that my new plot twist which comes much later in the book, could work. This new twist crawled up my limbs the other night as I sat holding a pen which hovered over the pages of a blank and unused 2017 diary. I had planned to do my time-line properly, you know, to make sure that the characters’ ages and their past endeavours all matched with the history which is referred to at times. The ‘goings-on’ – as my granny used to say – in the manuscript need to fit neatly together. No point in having someone aged ninety in contemporary times referring to her time in Italy being a twenty year period when it evidently needs to have been a forty year stint. Then this idea for a great twist tapped my subconscious and added a whole new element to the story – yippee!

Nigella cheats sometimes, so I do too. Someone else made this pastry and sold it to Mr Tesco, so I merely unwrapped, unrolled and shaped it. Marvellous and anyway, I am a busy and proper writing person of fiction, not cookery books (you didn’t need the flour really did you).

As well as working on my manuscript, I sat and read the magazine which comes, I believe seasonally, to members of the RNA (Romantic Novelists Association). It is full of inspiring articles but this one particularly struck me today. Three published authors; three members of the RNA, all of whom started where I am now; unpublished but hopeful and ambitious. I know at least two of them were also past members of the New Writers Scheme and their work was enjoyed, nurtured and formed into an actual real life BOOK! How cool is that? Knowing that they, too, feared their words being read for the first time by the NWS ‘readers’ but that they welcomed the constructive criticisms, working to knead their stories towards a readable and saleable shape gave me massive incentive today.

One word of warning when biting into a mince pie straight from the oven. Don’t do it; they are HOT!

Now I don’t normally bother recommending TV programmes to my readers, but should you be in the UK right now, and have nothing better to watch, I suggest you sit and give yourself a treat for the next hour from 9:15, may even be a tad longer. A bonkers idea – four couples of the verge of break up went to a holiday destination and swapped couples .. sort of WIFE SWAP on steroids .. overseen by a (rather nice if I may say so .. you may not. Oh) psychologist of relationships. It is one of the most fascinating studies on human behaviour I have every witnessed and following many months of self-study last year, I want to shake some of them and hug others. See how their habits and learned behaviours have led them to treat each other, and themselves… will the experiment have been enough to teach them something? Will their eyes have been opened to potentially different ways to conduct themselves? Can their marriages be saved? Let’s see ….

Maud’s Mystery – Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.

Kate Frances March 26, 2018

Wanted to share with you my funny little piece of flash fiction I typed with no plan last August. It was during that phase when the Black and White photo challenge was doing the rounds on FB … I took a photo of some maize on our farm (which I’ve since deleted so today borrowed from shutterstock for illustration purposes) and rather than merely post the photo on its own, I wrote a few words which randomly popped into my head as I stared at said photo…

A rustling noise made me glance towards the high stems of maize, expecting to see a dog or perhaps a deer but there was nothing. Nothing behind me, or to the side and definitely nothing in front.

I took this short cut through the maize plantations to the cottage on the edge of the wood daily now, as it saved me walking miles round on the track. The farmer had said I could; it had felt wrong to assume so I’d asked a few weeks before.

As I opened the rusty latch her voice filtered down the hallway from the old drawing room.

“Is that you?”

Who else would it be for goodness sake… “Yes Maud, I’ve brought your favourite today”

The surface in the kitchen was exactly as I’d left it the day before, even the teaspoon had not found its way from the draining board to the sink. She can’t have moved from that chair I thought. Maud’s voice sounded frail again as she announced her intention

“I’ve got the next photo all ready to show you. You look really very young.”

“I’ll just serve this up and bring it through Maud!”

Fourteen days I’d been coming now and fourteen parts to a story I’d been told by Maud. A story of long ago.

* * *

Maud did not appear to notice the bit of food nestled at the corner of her mouth and I tried hard not to focus on it as we talked.

“So this is me sat next to who was it .. your sister?” I pointed to an elderly lady wearing a black coat and hat who stared straight out of the photograph, as if she could see something behind me.

“Yes, she was much older than me. Brought me up after mother disappeared. I was wary of her always and hated that coat. She never took it off you know; summer or winter!”

Maud finished her meal and dabbed at her mouth with the napkin I had provided alongside the buttered bread and patè. The piece of food was gone.

“Did they ever find your mother?” I was intrigued but regretted the question the second it passed my lips.

“No. No-one cared in those days if someone went missing. It was always assumed the lost soul had wanted to be alone. Police had other crimes to watch over; not like these days where your modern computers can trace everyone.” Maud nodded at my involuntary surprised expression. How could this old lady who’d not moved from this house for years and who had no modern means of communication know about today’s world? I felt a shiver run through me and stood to take the plates away as a means of distraction.

🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾

This random piece grew, Day by Day for the 7 days of the challenge. My FB friends (well, two of them) raved about Maud’s tale.

It then became the base for my book!!

My first few chapters are quite different from what you read above. I now write about Lucy in the third person for a start, and I took out all the references to photographs because as a novel, I needed something deeper. A mystery that would bind Lucy to Maud, even after the latter’s sad passing …..

🤗

This time last week I was in prison – My visit to HMP Thameside’s book club

Kate Frances March 16, 2018

An amazing insight from an author. In fact, my favourite author of all my 2017 reads. Louise Jensen has published three titles and every one of them left me wanting more. Here in her blog about a visit to a prison to help others, I’m strangely proud of this talented stranger who is less so now I’m one of her biggest fans (ok, stop right there – you now sound like a stalker 🤣🙈)

Read The Sister, The Gift and The Surrogate… if you enjoy thrillers with twists.

fabricating fiction

Eighteen months ago, when my debut novel, The Sister, was No.1 in the charts, I was invited along to HMP Thameside to meet their book club. Immediately, The Fear hit and I quickly declined. Not because of the environment, but because I had a massive phobia of public speaking. Those who read my blog know that after turning down numerous talks, I was asked to speak at the Althorp Literary Festival last year and eager to attend, I had a course of hypnotherapy to help me overcome The Fear (you can read about that here). I’ve since spoken at, and enjoyed, several events so when HMP Thameside’s librarian, Neil Barclay, got back in touch and asked if I’d reconsider, grateful of a second chance, I said yes.

I had never been in a prison before and my expectations were very much centred around what I’d seen on TV, rowdy…

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